A Carte Blanche Design Brief Yields A Dazzling Brooklyn Apartment

Give a designer trust, and they’re bound to seize the opportunity. Give as much to Alexandra Pappas and Tatyana Miron, and you’re apt to have clients just as gratified by the outcome. The design duo has been best friends since their shared upbringings in Connecticut, so it was fitting that they met their clients—a young family who’d just purchased a new-build Brooklyn condo—through a mutual childhood friend. After visiting Miron’s own exuberant Manhattan loft, Pappas recalls the wife saying, “‘I love everything about it. Can you just do this for me?’ ” Apart from a few family items—an inherited midcentury sofa, a genteel portrait of a great-grandfather—“we were essentially unleashed,” says Miron.

Since Miron and Pappas had joined the project prior to completion of the buildout, they began by tailoring the unit to meet their clients’ unique needs. First up: a few modifications to the floor plan—including linking the children’s bedroom and playroom via pocket doors, extending one wall of the kitchen to accommodate a pantry and adding a utility room beneath the staircase. Cosmetic enhancements to the interior architecture were just as well considered, from white oak veneer cladding the extra-wide kitchen doorway, to Danby statuary marble tiling in the primary bathroom, to numerous well-appointed built-ins, like the handsome living room bookshelves with leather-inset panels. Clever details such as these were paramount to the project and general contractor Dylan Murray was instrumental in achieving them.

Crucially, Murray’s can-do mindset extended to mastering the project’s focal finish and defining element: lime-painted walls tinted to a rich hue Pappas describes as “duck mallard green.” The quality of light pouring through the condo’s tall windows was what allowed her and Miron to really dial up the drama—with the confidence of knowing the saturated shade would remain dynamic throughout the day.

The pair’s knack for confident color extends to smaller moments, too. Since the clients love to entertain, fashioning a cocktail station was a must (“they didn’t want to keep running to the kitchen to make a drink,” Miron says), so the decision was made to convert a closet into an enclosed wet bar replete with marsala-colored lacquer and a peach-tinted mirror backsplash to mimic the romantic aura of candlelight. “I think we just wanted that bar to be a surprise,” says Pappas. The warm tones, as well as “changing up the finishes really made it a ‘wow’ moment,” she adds.

“It was so fun to use great colors like these,” Miron effuses. “I mean, what other client is going to go for giant rust-colored curtains in a deep green living room? They were amazing.” But while bold hues were key to giving the new-build flavor, so were the textures inserted to create visual reprieve, such as a mix of natural fiber wallcoverings (Madagascar raffia in the entryway; a fine-weave grass cloth in the primary bedroom) and ivory linen club chairs to break up the sea of jewel tones in the living room. Stain-treated for durability, the neutral upholstery stands up to daily life with children. But like the antique Oushak rug that inspired the living room color palette, most of the home’s elements are intended to age gracefully anyway—like the custom dining banquette, which was designed to resemble a midcentury Scandinavian piece. “It’s the kind of virgin leather that will age and show oil marks,” says Pappas. “It looks super cool and adds great patina and history to the space.”

That same ethos extends to the apartment’s finishing touches. A custom Fortuny quilt embellishes the primary bedroom wall, a handmade pendant by Oregon artist Stephen White hangs over the bed and special pieces of vintage and artisan pottery—see: the color-blocked cobalt lamps they commissioned to flank the living room sofa, cutting the same horizon line as the Jane Wilson painting above—bring a characterful, collected air to every last vignette.

It’s these moments of intrigue that make the project feel so distinctly Pappas Miron—which is also the consequence of clients who permitted the two women to do what they do best. Notes Miron, “It was such a joy and a thrill to hear someone say, ‘Yes’ to almost everything we suggested.” Because of this, a Brooklyn family got exactly what they wanted, too.